Service Charter
Office of the Industry Complaints Commissioner
This Service Charter sets out the role of the Office of the Industry Complaints Commissioner, the services we will provide and the standards you can expect. The Charter explains how you can assist us to help you and provides an opportunity for you to comment on CASA’s performance.
The process will not only provide you with an avenue to seek a meaningful review of decisions made by CASA’s actions, when those actions have been unfairly based on an incorrect or incomplete understanding of the facts, or where you have been treated disrespectfully, but will also enable CASA to improve its service and performance generally and to see itself from the industry perspective.
The office of the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner is committed to providing the best possible service to the industry. We will regularly monitor and report on our performance against the Charter and seek to promote further improvement.
Role
The role of the Industry Complaints Commissioner is to:
- Investigate complaints where appropriate.
- Endeavour to resolve complaints in an impartial, timely and effective way to achieve fair outcomes.
- Where necessary and appropriate recommend to the Chief Executive Officer corrections to CASA’s processes and procedures to prevent recurrence of problems of the kind that gave rise to one or more complaints.
What we will investigate
The office of the Industry Complaints Commissioner are available to any person, other than a CASA employee, who has a genuine complaint about a CASA action (including the behaviour of a CASA employee) which they have been unable to resolve through normal channels. Unless there are good reasons for not doing so, if a complainant has not tried to resolve an issue by the above means then their complaint will be referred back to an appropriate manager.
It is important to note that the Internal Complaints Commissioner should not be seen as a convenient means of challenging any action by CASA simply because that action is inconsistent with your wishes or preferences. Investigations or reviews will only be undertaken where there is genuine reason to believe an injustice or mistake may have been made.
Where a complaint relates to a matter in respect of which the complainant has a statutory right to review a CASA decision in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal or the federal court, the ICC’s involvement may be limited in certain ways. In such cases the nature and extent of the ICC’s involvement will depend, amongst other things, on the following:
- Whether the time within which a person may exercise their right to a statutory review of a CASA decision has expired.
- Whether statutory review proceedings have already been initiated.
If CASA receives a complaint about a matter that is already before a court or the Tribunal, CASA may pursue an investigation into that complaint, but only in accordance with a process acceptable to the court or the Tribunal.
Where the Industry Complaints Commissioner is unable to intercede directly in such cases, your complaint may still be subject to consideration under other review processes. In this event the Industry Complaints Commissioner will advise you of the options available and refer your complaint accordingly.
The office will not investigate a complaint in the following circumstances.
- An investigation is unlikely to be conclusive due to lack of evidence.
- The complaint is trivial or vexatious.
- The normal CASA internal review process has not been completed with the appropriate office.
- The complaint concerns the formulation of CASA policy or legislation.
- The complaint concerns a matter under investigation by CASA with a view to possible prosecution action.
- The complaint involves a matter in relation to which a formal external review process has already resulted in a determination.
- Unless the circumstances are exceptional, no complaint concerning a matter that occurred more than 12 months prior to contacting the office of the Industry Complaints Commissioner will be investigated.
The services of the Office of the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner will be provided free of charge.
Values
The Office of the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner will endeavour to meet the highest standards and is committed to ensure:
- Independence
- Impartiality
- Accessibility
- Timeliness
- Integrity
- Professionalism
The service you can expect
On receipt of your complaint we will give it careful consideration to determine whether it is a matter that the office properly can and should investigate. Subsequently, we will:
- Acknowledge receipt of your written complaint within seven working days.
- Respond to telephone messages within 24 hours unless weekends or public holidays intervene.
- Advise or remind you of any rights you may have to an external statutory review or challenge.
- Advise you as soon as practicable whether your complaint will be investigated. If the decision is not to investigate the matter we will inform you why and advise you of other available avenues for addressing your complaint. If we choose to proceed with an investigation of your complaint, you will be provided with the name of a contact person in our office and we will keep you advised of the progress we are making at regular intervals.
- We will endeavour to finalise the matter within four weeks of receipt of the complaint. However, it should be recognised that the complexity of some matters may take more time to resolve.
- We will treat any information received with the highest level of confidentiality commensurate with the need to divulge certain information in the process of conducting an effective investigation and subject to CASA’s own legal obligations.
- We will provide you with the reasons for our determination of your complaint.
The Industry Complaints Commissioner has no authority to overturn any decisions made by CASA employees and delegates. He can however bring his recommendations to the attention of the original decision maker and if appropriate to the Chief Executive Officer.
How to make a complaint
- You can make a complaint in person, by letter, facsimile, email, telephone or by using the online complaint form . The office may ask you to provide additional details, and in some cases it may be necessary for an oral complaint to be submitted in an expanded written form.
- You can make an anonymous complaint, but this may affect our ability to fully investigate the matter since we will be unable to secure further information from you.
Complaints and feedback about our services
To enable CASA to review and improve the service provided by the Office of the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner we would appreciate your views and feedback on this Charter and the service provided.
Feedback or complaints may be sent to the Office of the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner by telephone, facsimile, email or letter. If you have a complaint about the way that we have handled your complaint it would be helpful if you raise the matter initially with the staff member who has been assigned to you to deal with your complaint. If you do not receive satisfaction then you can raise the matter with more senior staff.
Contacting CASA
You may use any of the following means to contact the Office of the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner:
Telephone: 61 (0) 2 6217 1717
Facsimile: 61 (0) 2 6217 1701
Email: Complaints@casa.gov.au
Letter:
Office of the Industry Complaints Commissioner
CASA
PO Box 2005
CANBERRA ACT 2601